How Do You Like Your Eggs?

Scrambled?  Poached?  Sunny Side Up?  Each day, servers in restaurants across America pose this question to customers to find out how they like the fragile-shelled, brown or white, protein-rich ovoids we call eggs.

At home, families have certain preferences as well.  In my own?  Fried eggs in butter, over medium.  And if you break a yolk while cracking or flipping?  That one’s yours and you’re probably not on egg detail next time.

However, in my home, “egg detail” extends well beyond cooking.  As caretakers of twelve egg-laying hens and a rooster, our duties include egg collection, coop cleaning, and chicken feeding. 

Photo by Madeline Baker

Our chickens, pictured above in all of their tri-colored glory, and below with my dad (aka “The Chicken Whisperer") happily consume corn feed, scratch grains, and vegetarian table scraps, along with all the bugs and worms they can catch.  By day, they roam our property, and by night they retire to a solid, secure, and (thanks to the mechanical expertise of my father) heated coop, and provide us with fresh brown eggs each day.  

Photo by Madeline Baker

At home in Michigan, the answers to questions like “how do you like your eggs?” and “where do you get your eggs?” were simple.  But when I moved to Columbus, Ohio for graduate school, the questions got a bit more complicated.

Photo by Madeline Baker

Because I had not purchased eggs in a store in over two years, I spent copious amounts of time in the dairy section of the Giant Eagle, reading each package carefully.  I chose to purchase “Nature’s Basket” brand brown eggs, in a package with the words “CAGE FREE” displayed prominently at the top. 

The carton stated that the eggs were, “produced from free to roam hens, fed a 100% all natural, all vegetarian diet.”  This language was somewhat comforting, but I worried that I had never seen how these chickens lived.  I was also more than a little homesick remembering how lovely it was to walk down to the coop and collect the eggs for that day’s breakfast.

Photo by Madeline Baker

Upon returning home, I did some research about the chickens that had laid my eggs.  The carton featured a logo that said “American Humane Certified.”  I visited the website of the American Humane Association and learned that the organization was founded in Ohio in 1877 to protect the wellbeing of farm animals and pets.  The website provided a link to downloadable copies of their standards for humane certified farms. 

I learned that, at minimum, these hens had access to 1½ inches of space along the food trough, 2” of space for water, and had 2 square feet of space each in their outdoor run area.  These physical dimensions allowed me to visualize the conditions in which these hens live.

           

The Humane Association also requires that, All hens have sufficient freedom of movement to be able, without difficulty, to stand normally, turn around, and stretch their wings.  They also have sufficient space to be able to perch or sit quietly without repeated disturbance. The association probably intended such a sentence to comfort consumers, but I was deeply troubled by the fact that these animals’ rights to movement and peace had to be negotiated, defended, and certified by an organization at all – that such rights are not self-evident. 

Don’t get me wrong, the American Humane Association is doing incredible work to monitor and defend these rights, but isn’t it sad that such an organization is necessary at all?  Imagine how we as humans would feel if our rights to “stand normally,” or “sit quietly...without repeated disturbance” had to be stringently defended against those who found it more cost-effective or profitable to strip us of such rights?

And what of the chickens who laid the eggs that were not “American Humane Certified”?  I’ll spare you the gory details here, but if you're curious, the footage in Robert Kenner’s film Food, Inc. of chickens who never see daylight stands in stark contrast with the sight of the chickens ambling around my family’s property.

Excerpt from Food Inc. directed by Robert Kenner.  C/o Youtube.

What do we take from all of this?  That food labels are necessary and instructive on one hand, but often meant to mislead consumers.  That we must do further research into farms and certifications to be better informed about the animals that produced our food.  And, that even careful research is no substitute for the experience of visiting (or starting!) a farm where everyone and anyone can monitor how the animals are treated at all times. 

Photo (and sandwich) by Madeline Baker

Furthermore, my emotional experience in the Giant Eagle revealed that having a connection to the land and animals that produce my food is part of what constitutes my identity and sense of home.  As I establish a life in a new city and state, I still find great joy and pride in crafting a sandwich with ingredients brought back from my home state of Michigan: eggs from the family chickens, lettuce from our garden, challah bread from a favorite Ann Arbor deli, and some zesty chili mayo for a kick.  It's how I like my eggs.

So, allow grocery stores, farmer’s markets, and local farms to be sites of education and empowerment.  Each dollar we spend on food from unethical food practices prolongs those practices, while each extra dollar we spend on ethical food helps ethical farm operations to survive and thrive.  Each product choice we make resonates to the workers, animals, and land that comprise the food’s history, and each small choice goes a long way to support the kinds of practices we all can live with.